Our revolutionary iSpecimen Marketplace® helps life science researchers in industry, government, and academia streamline the procurement of human biospecimens for their upstream research and work on treatments and diagnostics. The Marketplace also facilitates the sharing of specimens through our global network of biospecimen suppliers—including hospitals, labs, biobanks, and blood centers—by providing human biofluids, tissue, and cells for this research. In turn, provider organizations further fulfill their missions while recovering costs of managing specimen sharing in and out of their organi ..read more

Plastics are ubiquitous in the developed world, and scientists have long known that humans breathe and inadvertently eat microscopic fragments – equivalent, by one account, to a credit card’s worth plastic every week. Now, for the first time, Dutch researchers have proved micro- and nanoplastic particles from the environment end up in the human bloodstream. It’s the latest discovery affirming the importance of human biospecimens in advancing medical progress. A team led by scientists at the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam developed an analytic method for detecting trace-level plastic particles in ..read more

One of the most compelling medical reads you’ll encounter is this New Yorker piece, “Are We About to Cure Sickle-Cell Disease?,” on the potential to actually cure patients who have sickle-cell disease. The genetic condition causes red blood cells to become sticky and take on a sharp, crescent-like shape, thereby clogging blood vessels and triggering excruciating pain. CDC estimates sickle-cell disease affects approximately 100,000 Americans and occurs among about 1 out of every 365 Black or African-American births. Author/physician/educator Dhruv Khullar explores the promise of gene therapie ..read more

Although you can learn a lot from cancerous tissue, you can learn even more when you have patient data to put the biology in context. That’s why one iSpecimen client, a U.S. cancer research and diagnostic company, ordered longitudinal patient information from iSpecimen to complement its request for ovarian cancer tissue specimens. The company needed fresh tissue samples from five different patients along with de-identified follow-up data about each patient. The data would be collected six times over the next two years, specifically Three months, Nine months, Twelve months, Eighteen months, An ..read more

Although we’re based in Massachusetts, our scope is global. That’s how we’re able to fulfill our mission: helping researchers get biospecimens they need from the patients they want. And that’s why we continue to develop a worldwide network of suppliers. They help us address the acute demand for human biospecimens, the increasing specificity of researchers’ needs, and the backlog of studies waiting to get started. For example, an R&D organization investigating potential cancer cures has asked us to prospectively collect a very specific set of biospecimens – 30 plasma samples and 30 FFPE blo ..read more

A disease is an abnormal condition, and to fully understand it, you need to compare abnormal biology against the normal. That’s the concept behind the matched sets of human biospecimens that we provide to researchers around the world. The classic matched set is a tissue sample from a patient’s tumor paired with normal tissue taken from just outside the tumor margin. This set enables pathologists to compare the morphology of each specimen as they seek a diagnosis. Researchers turn to the human whole blood Since so many diseases are understood from a genomic perspective, and since the normal gen ..read more

Something to think about at your next in-person gathering: The actual number of COVID-19 infections in the United States could be nearly twice as high as the reported case count. As of mid-March 2022, there had been approximately 80 million COVID-19 cases reported in the United States by the Washington Post’s count. That number includes figures gathered from cities, states, and Johns Hopkins University. But a lot of infections apparently hover under the radar uncounted. The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) regularly looks at blood samples from the population and estimates ..read more

Looks do matter, at least when it comes to immune system performance, suggests a new study. Nearly 160 Texas college students recently posed for headshots and provided blood samples, and those rated more attractive had better performance in some aspects of their immune system. “[T]his work suggests complex, often sex-differentiated relationships between immune function, health, and attractiveness,” study authors wrote in the journal Proceedings of the Royal Society B. Attractiveness is universal “The results of the current research suggest that facial attractiveness may provide insights into o ..read more

Some of the best values are hidden in plain sight, like Toyotas, index funds and refurbished electronics. The same is true in the biospecimen world. Let us walk you through it. We’re known by many clients for giving researchers access to millions of banked and clinical remnant samples through our online platform, the iSpecimen Marketplace, as well as arranging for the custom collection of highly specific human biospecimens from consenting patients. Research often demands access to large sample volumes and broad diversity – demanding challenges that we relish. Often overlooked, however, are our ..read more

Why do roughly 1 in 3 COVID-19 patients experience symptoms lasting a month or more? And which newly diagnosed patients will develop so-called “long COVID”? Researchers may be approaching answers with the discovery that reduced levels of certain antibodies in the blood may help predict who will suffer long COVID. The discovery could potentially lead to a blood test early on to detect long COVID risk in newly diagnosed patients and guide treatment. The research from the University of Zurich was published on Nature Communications and reported by NBC News. Reduced levels of two immunoglobuli ..read more